That growth helped push the region’s unemployment rate down to 3.5 percent in June from 3.6 percent in May, the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas said Friday.

The employment growth accompanies the metro’s population growth. San Antonio’s population grew 25,000 from July 2013 to July 2014, a 1.8 percent growth rate that was that year’s highest among the country’s largest cities, according to data released in May by the U.S. Census Bureau data.

Among major metros, San Antonio’s job growth rate was second only to the Austin-Round Rock region, which has been growing at a 4 percent rate.

“It’s playing out the way you’d think,” said Keith Phillips, assistant vice president of the Dallas Fed’s San Antonio branch.

“We know that Austin wasn’t totally immune to oil and gas, but it’s probably the least sensitive,” Phillips said. “Here, there was a question mark. Historically, San Antonio hasn’t been an oil and gas town, hasn’t been sensitive. But given the growth in Eagle Ford, how would San Antonio be impacted?

“I had done some preliminary analysis, and it looked like San Antonio really didn’t have big impacts when the Eagle Ford was going up, so I expected not to have big impacts on the way down,” he said.

Overall, San Antonio’s second quarter wasn’t as strong as its first, Phillips said. But the retail and leisure and hospitality sectors picked up a lot of steam.

“Retail was maybe afraid to hire in the first quarter, not knowing how it was going to play out,” he said. “But consumers had more money in their pocket with the reduction in energy prices. So retail employment has picked up strongly in the second quarter, and leisure and hospitality has really remained strong all year.”

According to nonseasonally adjusted data from Workforce Solutions Alamo, the local branch of the Texas Workforce Commission, San Antonio employers added 4,600 jobs in leisure and hospitality in June and 400 in trade, transportation and utilities, which includes jobs in retail.

“Leisure and hospitality continues to provide strong numbers, offsetting the usual losses in education and public school staffing that occur each summer,” Workforce Solutions Alamo Executive Director Gail Hathaway said in a statement.

Government was San Antonio’s weakest sector, shedding 1,600 jobs, though Hathaway said the majority of those losses were due to public schools releasing staff for summer break. The education and health services sector lost 1,400 jobs, and Hathaway said most of the losses were in education services.

Still, the continued decline in federal spending may prove to be more worrisome for San Antonio than production cuts in oil and gas, Phillips said.

“There are a lot of federal contracts that come into San Antonio, even if it’s not measured as federal government,” he said.

The statewide unemployment rate dipped slightly in June to 4.2 percent from 4.3 percent in May. The federal unemployment rate for June was 5.3 percent.

Texas employers added 16,700 nonfarm jobs, with sectors including education and health services and professional and business services showing strong gains, the Texas Workforce Commission said.

Education and health services saw 10,100 added positions statewide and professional and business services 8,300 new positions. Mining and logging, the sector that includes jobs in oil and gas, added 2,700 jobs. It was the state’s first increase in sector jobs since November, and it countered a 12-month trend that saw 9,500 lost jobs.

The gains came as oil services provider Baker Hughes reported the year’s first rise in operating rigs. Analysts have since said the long-term picture for the sector still remained grim. On Friday, Baker Hughes reported that the short-lived rally had come to an end — the number of rigs drilling for oil dropped by seven this week.